A retrospective analysis of 237 Chinese families with Duchenne muscular dystrophy history and strategies of prenatal diagnosis

Background: To offer 4-year clinical prenatal diagnosis experience of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Methods: Denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) and Sanger sequencing were used for molecular diagnosis of 237 DMD families. Results: In the study, deletions, duplications, complex rearrangement and small mutations accounted for 47.3%, 8.4%, 1.7% and 42.6% of 237 families, respectively. Sixty-six different deletion patterns were identified in 112 families. Fourteen different duplication patterns were identified in 20 families and 4 complex rearrangements were identified. About 87.1% different small mutation patterns were identified, including 37.6% different nonsense mutation patterns, 24.8% different frameshift mutation patterns, 7.9% different missense mutation patterns, and 16.8% different splice site mutation patterns. There was no significant difference in the age of onset and mutation patterns (P >.05). The follow-up examinations revealed that the pregnancies of 14 cases were interrupted. Two cases were preterm births, 151 cases were delivered at term, 63 cases continued to pregnancy, and 7 cases were lost to follow-up. Conclusion: DHPLC and Sanger sequencing technique are efficient, sensitive, and specific in screening for DMD gene mutations. And pre-pregnancy DMD gene examination is an important step to assess mutation type of family with suspected DMD and guides exactly prenatal diagnosis in high-risk families.